


repair

by acroamatica



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Recovery from Injuries, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, hux has had enough of people breaking shit, is it ooc? i don't care and neither should you, kylo ren has anger issues, this whole damn thing is a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6755500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acroamatica/pseuds/acroamatica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren is broken, along with everything else. So it's a good thing someone studied engineering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	repair

**Author's Note:**

> For [hux-you-up](http://hux-you-up.tumblr.com/), who makes me laugh, who listens, and who says such lovely things when I need someone to do that. <3
> 
> Thanks to [piratical-princess](http://piratical-princess.tumblr.com/) for supplying timely infusions of canon, and general awesomitude! <3

More than anything, Kylo Ren hated not being able to move. Moving was doing, and doing was having an impact on the galaxy.

Lying here in this bed was like dying, slowly; his momentum was gone, his energy all potential, and he kept remembering, without wanting to, the snow and the hardness of the ground.

They told him to rest. What did they know of what he needed? If he slept, he only dreamed, and his dreams were… so much worse than being awake. He burned with the need to _do something_.

And yet, every time he tried, his useless body reminded him - he had failed. He had allowed the traitor to wound him, and the scavenger girl to nearly kill him; the Wookiee’s shot had bled more than he had expected, and force of will, no matter how strong, could only carry him so far. And when he had tried to offer the girl an alliance, the guidance she sorely needed… she had rejected him. He was not sure if that had hurt more than the wounds. 

He had expected that they would not save him. Lying there, with the blaze of the anger that was his whole life chilling to greyish coals, he had not thought there would be enough value in him.

And then something like a mirage: Hux, suddenly there against all logic and reason, and all the scorn in the world didn’t change the fact that his ginger hair had been just fire enough to keep the coals of Kylo Ren from going entirely out.

Kylo had thought then that he had dreamed Hux, and for a while he had almost believed it. He had not seen Hux since they had come back aboard the Finalizer. 

It was hardly surprising. Hux would never have time to waste on gloating. There would be no visit from him without a good reason.

But he was almost certain that he remembered, through the haze of pain and snow, watching Hux stoop to pick up the lightsaber that had fallen from his hand. He had sneered. Or perhaps that was just his face. But he had taken it, and as its presence on the shelf next to the bed testified, he had made certain that this one thing, at least, remained to Kylo.

He had been looking at it for several days now: his sword, as cold and dead and motionless as he was.

It was only now that he noticed, with the painkillers beginning to lessen their hold on his senses, that it had been damaged too.

He reached for it, pushed past the pain in his left shoulder to extend the only arm he could use. The droids had immobilised the right one, strapped it to his chest to keep him from tearing open the long wound there. The skin would still be delicate for another day or two, apt to rip rather than stretch; the gash on his left shoulder had been less serious, thankfully, and they hadn’t immobilised that arm.

His muscles felt weak as he lifted the hilt into his lap, and he turned it gently over with his fingers.

There was a chunk missing out of one of the side vent shrouds, as though the metal had sheared; the connection between the crystal chamber and the power cells looked misaligned, faintly out of true. The vents weren’t fully closed, which suggested that they were stuck. And there was something loose inside, something that shifted metallically as he rolled it. Experimentally, he picked it back up, grimacing at the pull of his still-knitting muscles, and thumbed the ignition stud.

It did not light. There was a faint, momentary feeling that it might, a spark - but no blade leapt spitting from the hilt, no beautiful and cleansing fire.

He dropped it onto the blankets, threw his head back and growled, through gritted teeth. So everything was ruined.

Fine. He had built it. He could fix it. This, at least, he could make better.

He clamped the hilt between his knees as best he could, ignoring the wound on his leg - was there no part of him that still functioned correctly? - and twisted awkwardly at the housing until the damaged vent shroud piece began to come loose. It hurt to do it with his left hand, but he couldn’t reach the buckle on the sling that held his right arm up. Probably that was on purpose. They must have known he would try to free himself. It was too maddening.

His own palm blocked his view of the threads of the vent shroud, and when it came free, he wasn’t expecting it: it slipped from his fingers, bounced off the side of his leg, and down onto the floor, disappearing immediately into some corner or other. 

He tried to roll, to look for it, but that pulled at the wound in his side, and the sudden hot feeling there told him he’d reopened something. Everything was ruined, and broken, and it _hurt_ ; he fell back on the bed, as he had fallen back into the snow, and howled like a wounded animal.

There were boot heels, then, and the door hissed open - but instead of the calm tones of a medic or a droid, this voice was a whipcrack: “ _Ren._ ”

He turned his head, too fast. Hux stood in the door, his eyes stabbing at Ren with the same vicious, electric brightness as the saber the scavenger girl had stolen.

“Don’t you _dare_ destroy my medbay, Ren,” he seethed. “Don’t you dare. I have too many wounded as it is, and not enough supplies; if you waste _any_ of what little we have on a pointless tantrum I will throw you in detention, wounded or not.”

“What are you doing here?” Kylo asked.

“I was actually coming to give you a mission update,” Hux snapped. “I have spoken with the Supreme Leader and he requested that I tell you, if you could be told. But I see I was just in the nick of time.” He gestured to the saber hilt in Kylo’s lap. “You couldn’t go two whole days without carving up some part of my ship?”

“It doesn’t work,” Kylo said, dully.

Hux looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“The saber. It’s broken. I can’t fix it.” He stared back at Hux. “I was trying, and. I can’t.”

Hux raised an eyebrow. “Ah,” he said. “Because you don’t know how, or -”

“I _built_ it,” Kylo said. “I _know_. I just… can’t.”

He didn’t want to admit it to Hux, how much doing anything at all hurt right now. Hux was certainly the sort of person who wouldn’t let himself be slowed down by anything short of a battlefield amputation.

Hux gave Kylo another long look. Then he stepped forward, stooped, and straightened again, with the damaged vent housing in his fingers. It had been just underneath the edge of the bed, where Kylo couldn’t see it. “Here,” Hux said, and dropped it in Kylo’s lap. Then he turned and stalked out again.

So much for the mission update, Kylo thought resentfully, and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the throbbing in his side to ebb.

But not even ten minutes later, Hux strode in with a strange case in one hand.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Kylo said.

“I thought,” Hux said, rather carefully, “that you might find this useful.” He unlatched the case, and Kylo saw that it held an entire, moderately basic but still fairly complete, small electronics repair kit.

Kylo looked up at him, not quite able to formulate a question.

“As much as I might be comforted by you being unable to destroy my ship,” Hux said, “the orders I came to relay to you are that we are going back to Snoke, so that I can hand you over to resume your training. It seems a flaw in the plan if you are unable to use your weapon. And I don’t imagine you have many other plans in the next several days. So you may as well fix it.”

Kylo glanced down at the saber hilt, then back up - he shook his head at Hux. “I can’t,” he said, and then, the words rushed, “Not - I only have one hand.”

“Mm,” said Hux, “true.” From one of the hollows in the case, he pulled a metal cylinder, uncapped one end and shook out a pair of glasses. Magnifying lenses, by the looks of them. He set them on the end of his nose. “But I have two.”

Now Kylo stared outright. “Are you… you’re saying you’re going to _help_? You? _Me_?”

Hux glared at him over the tops of the lenses. “You know I’m an engineer. This is _my_ kit. I’m actually perfectly qualified to do this, I’ve just never worked on a ridiculous semi-magical weapon before. So I assume, if you built it, you can direct me. Unless there’s some mystical ancient Force-assisted version of electronics that you can’t possibly teach me?” The challenge was clear in the way he pointed his chin.

“No,” Kylo said. “Not… for this part.”

“Fine.” Hux picked up the saber hilt and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it. The metallic clinks from inside it made him wince slightly. “How do I open it?”

“Hidden catches,” Kylo said briefly. He reached out and touched the hilt, and thought very hard for a second about friction, and whether there might be less of it in three very particular spots. The housing separated in Hux's hands, and the power coil assembly slid out, detached pieces falling free to land on the blanket. 

“Ah,” Hux said, as he laid the housing down on the bed. “Right. So that would be why it doesn't turn on.”

“Maybe part of the reason.” Kylo poked at the crystal cradle. “This, here, is bent too far, and the vents got wet and aren't irising properly.”

Hux picked up the top of the housing and stared hard at the malfunctioning vents through his glasses. They made his pupils look huge. “It’s just rust,” he said. “You should keep this lubricated.”

“Oil just burns off.” Kylo watched him stare at the tiny moving parts, and wanted to tell him, _I assembled those by hand. They sliced my fingers, those vanes, until I bled too much to hold them. And then the next day I got up, and did it better._

“Graphite,” Hux said, and to his credit, that wasn't the most scornful Kylo had ever heard him sound. He had offered it, almost - a fact, not a judgement. “How do I get them apart?”

“Be careful,” Kylo said, before he could help himself, as the tip of Hux's finger came within millimetres of the bladelike iris sections. “They're very sharp.”

Hux looked up, a question in his eyes.

“One of us wrapped head to toe in bandages is enough.” Kylo almost smiled. “You probably want to keep the use of both of your hands, especially at a time like this.”

Hux raised an eyebrow but let the statement pass.

Kylo had to be in more pain than he had thought, or on better drugs; he could have sworn that as Hux bent his head down again, he was hiding a smile. But that wasn't possible. So he was hallucinating. 

At least they were nice hallucinations. 

“Let me,” Kylo said, and let the Force pull apart the tiny, vicious pieces, lifting the iris assembly free and letting it drop into Hux's palm, where it opened like a water flower.

Hux turned it this way and that, watching the light play over the vanes and pick out the tiny spots of rust. “This will all be repairable,” he said finally, and pulled a soft cloth out of the kit to work carefully at the spots.

“Not by me,” Kylo said, wondering if they were just talking about the lightsaber, anymore.

“Not yet.” Hux’s eyes were very green in this light. “But you can fix some of it. And I can help with the rest.”

Kylo looked at him, concentrating on the delicate polishing, with what might have been the faintest hint of pink in the apples of his cheeks.

“Okay,” he said.


End file.
